Chapter: 755 - Full Melding

Tala held the whole nearby area under her authority, her will supreme in an odd way.

She was a workman, fixing someone else’s home. Sure, it would be hard to say that she owned what she was striving to work on, to fix, but she had the definite right to do as she was.

The great rents in existence were… odd. They had too much reality in them, causing strange overlaps, the light passing through overlapping at a stagger, canceling out most of itself and leaving only mottled miniscule remainder that shifted as the loose bits of reality flapped in the currents of power.

If she left things like this, who knew what the results would be.

These weren’t thinned spots that were ragged and in need of careful re-weaving. Even so, the odd creatures were beginning to swarm, beyond the awareness of most beings.

Anatalis seemed to be watching some of them, but even his god-beast pups didn’t seem to be reacting to them.

Different spheres of power, it seems.

-Indeed.-

Regardless, she wasn’t going to leave reality as it was.

The automaton army scattered about was making things harder with their disparate reality field and the splinters they were leaving in their wake.

She wouldn’t let that stop her.

In the arcane cities, she had slit open reality, trimmed back any excess, and stitched back in clean chunks that she perfectly tailored to the gap.

That isn’t what she wanted here.

All across the area, she wove the excess into her own expanded space without pulling it to the superficial first. That meant pulling the parts that had been in the Doman-Imithe into the mix as well. Specifically, she interwove each piece into similar regions within Walden’s domain, trying to keep the connections logical and sequential, even if the spacing between the superficial and Walden’s stoneward domain wasn’t identical.

In truth, the expanded space that was Walden’s domain was too big to be mapped one-to-one on the area she controlled on the superficial. As such, she folded that larger space as well, layering it stone- and starward, interconnecting it as well through various passages that reminded her of open cells, if with effectively no hallway between them.

She shifted the endingtrees, pulling a rather large number of saplings from her own grove to fill the quota and maintain a solid border of the magical trees on each of the edges of reality she was creating.

With all of that, the layers weren’t expanded spaces any longer, they were fully integrating with Zeme, thus neatly bypassing the one entrance per expanded space limit.

It wasn’t really a hack that they could use for fast travel as it had a definitive limit for establishment. That said, with Walden in command of the domain, who knew how large it could grow eventually.

-Still, it won’t allow for instantaneous travel.-

Oh, of course not. That’s the realm of teleportation, and that has its own limits.

-...You know? I think that teleportation might be rather good for us, now that I consider it.-

Tala grunted. Alat had a point. Though, it might be considered giving up agency over her body to let the teleportation circle recreate her… But was that really how it worked?

She almost pulled up the schema to look, but Alat chastised her, reminding them both that they were rather in the middle of something.

Right!

Tala was holding everything in a state of half-connection, aligning all the pieces before allowing them to snap together.

It was almost time. She just needed—

An odd cougar looking cat—the size of a horse—came charging from behind the factory-tree.

It had the aura of an arch-beast, easily equalling Tala in meta-phyiscal weight. The rack of antlers upon its head, and the fact that it was lowered for the charge, told the tale of who this was.

The first of the Forest Spirit’s offspring had joined the battle.

-Rust! Solidify it, Tala! That thing’s coming right at us.-

Tala grit her teeth and focused.

She ran out of time, but something kept her safe for a moment longer than expected.

She needed to do this right, she needed to align all the bits properly and… There!

She released her hold, and all across the battlefield, the oddly dark, flickering streaks faded, revealing different views of a different forest, Walden’s forest.

Tala grinned, her smile growing in place just as the big cat finally arrived within striking distance at her side.

* * *

Rane caught a captain’s blade in one hand as he bisected a lieutenant with Force, his wooden sword cutting the automaton as easily as it passed through the air.

If his glare could have killed, than a large swath of the enemies around him would have dropped, but as it was, his will and aura knocked back the group that was trying to hem him in.

Rot struck for his back, and Rane spun with a growl, throwing the captain’s sword—with the captain still holding it—into the Leshkin’s face, disrupting the attack and allowing him to slip in for another series of brutal strikes.

Black Legionnaires were thick around them now as whatever Tala had done had dumped an entire enemy army onto the field.

Life’s never boring with her around. His thoughts radiated affection for his wife beside the rage pulsing from his soul for their enemies. They wove in tandem throughout his being, even as he obliterated more of the midnight black abominations.

He glanced toward Tala, only for his eyes to widen in shock and anger.

Terry had just flickered in, cutting a set of red lines across the flank of a strangely antlered cat, barely knocking it aside from Tala.

Even so, Rane saw that it wasn’t the only threat.

An elk was coming in from another oblique angle, and Terry had been forced to reengage with his Leshkin.

Rane’s growl deepened, resonating in his chest.

He decided to take a bit more time than Terry had but to be more decisive. He launched through the air, landing right near the terror bird’s fight, distracting that greater Leshkin and allowing Terry to tear it down to mulch.

Unfortunately, it would be back in short order. Rane could feel that its power hadn’t dispersed and was already pulling a new body together from the surrounding plant matter. The spirits were somehow more locked together and stable than the previous Leshkin that Rane had seen and slain.

Regardless, with his new positioning, he vaulted back, hitting the new enemy in the flank and grabbing on, his weight and momentum carrying them both back toward Rot, allowing Rane to interpose Force between the Leshkin’s massive blade and a yellow hue-man who was too engaged against a squad of Black Legion to have noticed the imminent threat.

There, that should— He glanced back just in time to see the cat launch itself at Tala again.

Rane was out of position, and Terry’s opponent had just reconstituted.

Either of them might still have interfered, but Tala’s work seemed to have been completed, her hands pulling back in to receive the charge.

The momentary dark rents in their surroundings faded away, revealing a familiar forest.

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It was hard to describe, but the sense was that walking through certain dells would let him go somewhere else than if he went around them.

Trees were visible around terrain features that didn’t seem to exist from other view points.

Rane felt a grin grow across his face.

She’d done it. She’d brought Walden and his domain to the fight, and the elk would be joining them soon.

Moreover, she was now likely ready to defend herself once again.

Alat’s voice sounded in his mind, brought by Enar. “-Task complete. Joining the fight.-”

A thunderous impact rocked the battlefield as the odd elk-puma thing hit his wife with terrifying force.

Despite her physical and metaphysical weight Tala was tossed backward like a quarrel from a crossbow.

Rane only had a moment of concern—manifesting as a hot bubble of berserk rage, ready to pop if she were truly hurt—before he saw her react even mid-flight.

His fierce smile returned. She’d be fine, and around his own clash, he was about to get quite the show.

* * *

Tala was… irritated.

She twisted as she skipped off a hill, blowing through a half-dozen automata and rendering each of them to slag on her way by.

With her aura control and the stability of newly restructured reality, her gate was practically skating over the surface, blessedly not abrading or tearing through despite her blistering speed. It wouldn’t be great to go this quickly for too long, but a few short bursts shouldn’t be an issue.

Her armor reformed, pushing outward and allowing her chest to reinflate.

She shot out a hand, vaulting over an elf that was laying about himself with a pair of slender swords. She was heading toward a gap in the trees that wouldn’t see her bouncing flight stop for a long distance.

She’d positioned herself properly, however, and a flare of magic into her surface area enhancement magics turned the air around her feet into a massive windbrake, more effective than a dozen hills.

The impact in the air sent a wind whipping back through the forest, only catching a small portion of the forces fighting below her.

Tala might have overdone it, as she completely burned out her inscriptions, forcing her to devote a small portion of her mind to weaving silver and gold back through the flesh of her feet.

Her natural magics would probably have been enough, but she wasn’t willing to risk it, given her opponent.

A second later, she launched off of the same platform before it could dissipate, sending a second burst of wind out behind her as she rocketed back toward the antlered cat.

It crouched, hissing and showing its fangs in obvious animosity.

Even though she knew her face was hidden, Tala grinned, feeling what was about to happen.

Walden charged from one of the gentle folds in Reality, taking the cat in the side with his own antlers.

Tala had been armored, and even so, she’d been heavily injured by the cat’s charge. Even now, she was pulling food directly into her stomach to help restore her lost resources as her body finished knitting itself back together.

The cat’s hide was tough, but it wasn’t armor, and Walden’s antlers were fierce.

More than two dozen holes were punched into the feline as it’s impaled form was lifted and bodily tossed away.

Walden’s aura washed out, slamming into the underlying aura of the Forest Spirit in a play at mastery.

Most of his attempt was rebuffed, even as his domain settled atop the underlying sovereignty of the Forest Spirit, but a miniscule fraction locked in, maintaining separation from the surrounding claim.

The adding in of his preestablished domain was likely the only reason he was able to do this as even while the Forest Spirit’s claim rushed in to try to seize the new territory, that very act acknowledged the value of that which Walden already had claim over, building the immortal elk’s authority higher by the very act.

Walden swelled to Tala’s perception, not in size but in weight, his subordinate claim growing massively even as his primary authority remained miniscule. In that, though, it was as expected, planned for, and required.

The alliance never expected him to be able to truly challenge the Forest Spirit—though, if he was ignored he would do that too—no, the point had been to have him ready to take what was left behind when the Forest Spirit was slain.

Another elk—as large as Walden had been before his most recent transformation, and so now nearly twice his current size—sprang from the forest, cloaked and empowered by the Forest Spirit to challenge and slay this usurper.

In that, this new elk was a champion, a weight of importance added along with the authority and power backing the attack.

Like Walden’s only moments before, his attack came from the side, seeking to do to Walden what he’d done to the cat.

But Tala was already incoming like the siege ordinance of an angry Sovereign.

The cat was beginning to rise, if shakily, ready to rejoin the fight against his attacker.

Walden stood proud, facing the feline, and a cervid was barely a dozen yards from taking the immortal elk in the side.

Tala blew through that new elk’s neck bodily, sending blood, bone-fragments, and torn bits of flesh blossoming outward behind her.

She’d been tucked into a ball, flipping around to get her feet ahead of her again, even as she ignited her inscriptions once more, to a lesser extent this time.

Her stop wasn’t instant, but it was rapid, allowing her to come to a halt just before the newest aggressor's head hit the forest floor.

His attack had been foiled, the authority and weight put behind him was sundered, and Walden’s power grew fractionally.

Tala barked a laugh as Terry flickered away from the Leshkin he’d been harassing, leaving it spinning around in confusion just long enough for his task.

The terror bird grew to the size of a building before snapping up the falling body of the large elk before it could topple to the ground.

He flickered away, leaving only the head as physical evidence of the great beast’s demise. Metaphysically? Terry’s spirit swelled with the arch-beast meal, consequently bolstering—but not truly increasing—Tala’s power and authority.

Tala touched down, Walden stomping forward to lock horns with the cat, a flexing and tossing of his powerful neck throwing that opponent toward her.

Flow manifested as a void-glaive, and she split the feline in two before it could land on her, the two halves and all they contained coated the ground beyond her, leaving her utterly untouched.

Her head slowly turned toward the surrounding automata until her focus locked on a pair of senior commanders, her voice slightly above a whisper, but it still carried through her aura and authority. “Next.”

They launched toward her as if obeying the command.

This was far from over.

* * *

Lea braced, blocking an upward cut, triggering her magics and using the force of the blow to throw her into an arcing leap over the lieutenant’s head.

Her sword flicked out like the needle on a sewing machine, stitching a line of perforations through the middle of the legionnaire’s head.

Sparks and flares of magic jumped across the miniscule gaps, real enough to cause issues, but not really large enough to fully break the flow.

The result was worse than a true cut, as the redundant back-up pathways and systems didn’t quite trigger, but there wasn’t enough power going through to maintain coherence.

She tried to assert command over the lieutenant in his disrupted state, but as with every time in this clash, she was rebuffed.

They’d patched that hole, and she shouldn’t expect to gain such an advantage again.

Still, with her mother’s aura blanketing all of them, keeping the scattered automata from joining their reality fields together, Lea was able to take advantage of her magics along with most of their fighters.

That gave her advantage that she wasn’t used to against the Black Legion, giving an odd feeling of ease to the fight that she pushed back against. It would be all too easy to become complacent or prideful, and either of those would lead to injury or death for herself or those fighting beside her.

Around her, Talons clashed with automata, flickering back to Ironhold and to waiting healers when they were too hurt or drained of power to continue.

Each time one vanished, they were replaced by a waiting comrade, and when they were healed and replenished, they’d join the queue, ready to replace another Talon when the need arose.

As with every time she’d seen the tactic, it was a bit humbling. It effectively meant that each Talon could fight without regard to energy or injury. The result was that their style closely mimicked her own when she lost control, but theirs was purposeful and without the downsides she had to bear through.

She was glad to have such fighting at her side.

As she finished her arcing flip, she lashed out, crippling legs of Black Legionnaires that were engaging those around her, giving further advantage to the alliance fighters in the area.

Her eyes flicked to where the great wolves waited near the middle of their lines, still not engaged in the clash…

She squinted. Were they crouching? Stalking forward?

A virulent hiss barely preceded a lowing as if a massive cow had gotten stuck.

A ripple passed through the forest, echoing with her very soul, and the dark streaks vanished, replaced by forest… but a different one, seemingly interwoven with the southern forest that had been here for uncounted years.

A grin spread across Lea’s unarmored features.

Walden was coming to join the fight now, and that would bring the Forest Spirit.

Before she could turn to see what was happening around her mother, a thunderous explosion staggered her backward.

The entire battle hitched as something white shot off toward one side of the fight, devastating a large swath of automata before jerking to a halt midair with a brilliant flair of magical power.

Lea laughed, deflecting a sergeant and simply kicking a soldier to the ground, shattering the weak construct as it tried to tackle her from the side.

By the time she got another look, jumping over a wave of legionnaires—to avoid the tide and get a better view—her mother was engaged with what seemed to be two senior commanders beside Walden who was locking horns with a larger elk, while seeming to be the stronger of the two.

The head of another elk was on the ground, and the wolves were moving forward, low and stalking as they spread out.

Only Anatalis was holding back, clearly waiting for the Forest Spirit.

The heavy hitters had begun to come out, and chaos was just starting to spread.

Lea landed back beside Talax and buckled down.

They had their tasks, and their own enemies to fight.

That, of course, was when the Forest Spirit arrived like an avalanche, charging through their lines from the flank, head lowered and antlers reaping lives without slowing the massive beast one bit.

In less than a breath, the massively powerful cervid closed on Anatalis from the side, aiming to take the wolf with the full power of his initial charge.